Little Midwives

Sometime after Snookums had her kittens in my bed, I told Frances about the blessed event. She said that was nothing--one of her cats was expecting and she was going to watch them being born. Her family had a whole menagerie of animals, as I have said, so I asked how she knew. She explained the 'facts of life' about cats, as she knew them, the sum total being that her cat 'Missy' had a very big belly. I asked her if I could come and watch, too. She said I could and she'd let me know when.

I heard no more about it for a couple of weeks, and then one morning she was at our kitchen door. "Come on, come on! You've got to come and see! They're coming!"

I was right in the middle of washing the dishes, my obligatory daily chore before school. Frances hopped on one foot, then the other. "Come on, come on!"

My hands still wet with soapsuds, we ran down the street to her house, and into the old shed. Missy had already given birth to one kitten, but more were still on the way. She lay on a pile of old sacks in a dark corner and, as we watched open-mouthed and open-eyed, two more gradually made their way into the world. They seemed to be hairless and their eyes were closed. But one of them was very, very different. It had two heads! And it was alive, as were the others.

Frances began yelling for her father to come and see. He took one look at the newly-borns, who were already nursing, picked up the one with the two heads, and said something like "I'll take care of this," and left. I rushed back home, finished the dishes and left for school. I never heard any more about the two-headed kitten, and Frances simply said her father had "taken care of it."

Looking back, the birth of that unusual kitten was simply a miss-print in the pages of that family's life--just something that had to be gotten rid of. When I told my mom and dad, I don't think they even believed me, knowing my penchant for imagination. But to me, that was a little miracle at the time. And I often wondered if the little creature would have survived. These days, it would possibly have been a media event.